


The Last Time I Saw Malcolm Reynolds

by danahid



Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-28
Updated: 2008-01-28
Packaged: 2017-10-08 16:30:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/77536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danahid/pseuds/danahid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You know the definition of a hero? Someone who gets other people killed. You can look it up later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Time I Saw Malcolm Reynolds

**Author's Note:**

> **Spoilers and Attributions:** Post-_Serenity_ (BDM). Story summary paraphrased from BDM. Epigraph from "Safe" by Drew Z. Greenberg. References/dialogue from "War Stories" by Tim Minear in (II). References to BDM cut scenes and dialogue from "Serenity I &amp; II" by Joss Whedon in (III). References to dialogue from BDM in (X).

_Mal: Well, look at this! Appears we got here just in the nick of time. What does that make us?_  
_Zoë: Big damn heroes, sir._  
_Mal: Ain't we just?_  
_— from "Safe" (Firefly 1.07) by Drew Z. Greenberg_

 

** I. Cal Smith, bystander **

Like I said, I didn't know who he was. I was working on my own boat down a ways, too far to catch what he said to that purplebelly. I was keeping an eye on 'em though. Not like I was expecting trouble, but folk don't always do what you expect, ain't like I need to tell you that.

Told you I didn't know who he was. Didn't tell you that I didn't much care neither. All I know was what I saw, and I saw enough. He was limping and favoring one arm. I didn't much notice his crew though I seem to recall they were pretty beat-up their own selves. One thing I did notice was that ship of his. She was an aught-three that'd seen better days but still beautiful as the day is long.

It near broke my heart when I missed seeing 'em lift off. I wanted to see that old girl take to the sky. Seeing her winging into the black woulda been something special.

 

** II. Adelai Niska, businessman **

He is special, yes. I can admit this. Many people know he crossed Niska, not once but twice. I hire him to do job. Job does not get done. He makes lie of my reputation, so I bring him here to show him my reputation is no lie. Is truth. That business is still running.

This is why I bring him here, yes. It is when we are past preliminaries, when I am getting to heart of matter and I am meeting the real him, this is when there are interruptions. This is when his people come for him. Even if he is damaged, was dead, his people, they want him back. He is special, they think.

After, there is talk that Niska is old man, too old to run business. It takes many months for reputation to recover.

I think many people know his name. More now than before. And he is an extraordinary man, yes. But these are not times for extraordinary men. Heroics, they are unseemly. They complicate. Are not good for business.

When I am meeting the real him, I try to say this. But men like him, they do not listen.

That is mistake.

 

** III. Sheydra Vespre, Companion Training House **

Everyone makes mistakes, says things they don't mean, does things they regret. She never said, but I knew she regretted leaving him.

I asked her about him once. It was late evening; the novices had retired for the night. We were sitting together on the balcony overlooking the valley. She leaned back in her chair with a tired sigh and closed her eyes. _He's a decent man,_ she said without opening her eyes. _He's a lot of things._

When she heard the stories that were circulating among the novices, she was furious. She objected to his being called a pirate, objected to their relationship being the subject of what she called schoolroom confabulations. She seethed about the novices and their shortcomings. I let her change the subject, let her remind herself about a Companion's proper control and discipline, watched with interest as the fury in her eyes gave way to an open, unguarded look, a kind of softness, at the thought of him.

I saw him only once. He wore a brown coat and he was taller than I'd imagined. He came to rescue her. (If only the novices knew how close their fantasies were to the substance of the man.) I watched them scramble down the mountainside. They seemed to be arguing. Even from a distance I could see his body leaning heavily on hers, her body curving into his.

She must have known that fighting at his side would jeopardize her standing with the Guild. I don't think she thought about that likely consequence. Everyone makes mistakes, but I don't think she thought going back to him, fighting alongside him, was a mistake.

 

** IV. Jane Putnam, housewife **

I don't believe in fate, but I do believe that you make mistakes according to what you want in your heart.

What I've always wanted in my heart has been to raise my boys right. I want them to think before they speak, look to others before themselves, stand up for what's good and true. Of course I want them to make the best out of their lot by getting a good education.

Probably it was a mistake to let my boys watch that wave but I thought it would be educational. It wasn't that first wave about Miranda, thank God. It was a later wave, one of the "in-depth reports" that followed the first wave. This particular report ended with a capture of the man they figured had sent the Miranda wave. The man in the capture was wearing a faded Independent uniform that hung off his shoulders. He looked defeated, exhausted, and very young.

Both of my boys were glued to the Cortex when the report came on. The images of blood and gore and glorious heroism were enough to keep them fascinated to the end. Afterward, they searched the Cortex for all the stories they could find about their hero and his loyal crew. When they couldn't find many stories, they made up stories of their own. I heard them once when I was carrying the laundry upstairs. I paused on the landing to listen: it was the first time I realized you could make someone amazing just by pretending they are.

Last week was the first time I found my boys playing Browncoats and Reavers. Now that I've caught them at it once, they play their game out in the open all the time, spreading their tinfoil knives and cardboard axes across the front room, arguing loudly over who gets to be the heroic Browncoat.

Whenever I catch sight of their game, my heart clenches.

Malcolm Reynolds is a dream my boys won't give up. Sometimes I want to shake them, tell them how the 'verse really works, explain that their hero is just an ordinary man who probably struggles to make ends meet and probably drinks too much and probably has a mother who worried about his future as much as I worry about theirs — just an ordinary man who makes mistakes, an ordinary man who wouldn't have chosen to be a hero if he'd had any other choice.

 

** V. Lin Yang, ranch foreman **

He was always gonna leave. That was his choice. No matter his fine words about wantin' to inherit and do right by his ma and take care of the land, there was something restless in him, something unsettled. The day he left to join the _kuangzhe de_ Browncoats, I found his ma hunched over in the front room, head in her hands.

He didn't come home after the war. His ma coulda sat in that front room window, waitin' and waitin' day and night, but I knew he was gone for good. The sky swallowed him whole, and he couldn't come back if he wanted to. It weren't really no surprise. I always figured he was meant for other things.

His ma knew her boy better'n I did, but it didn't stop her from hopin' he'd find his way back to her from wherever he'd gone. Some days I had to hide out in the barn doing make-work with the hands; I couldn't stand to see that _ai-li shen-ban_ look in her eyes.

Once she told me, _You always miss the one that breaks your heart,_ and I had to bite my tongue to keep from telling her she had the right of it. T'weren't my place.

 

** VI. Ella Kwan, school teacher **

My place is here, but when my friends ask me, _Why do you have to break your heart over these girls,_ I have no answers for them.

The girls — my students — come to me from the Academy, to which my school is affiliated though separate. They have been dismissed from the Academy's elite program; I am not told the reasons for their dismissal. I have never asked for details about the Academy's curriculum.

Without exception, my girls have an odd, intense look about them. They stare at people too directly. They speak too softly. They are prone to fits of violent anger. Occasionally, for reasons I have never discovered, some of them fall completely still and silent. Whenever I find one of my girls in this state, barely breathing, head flopping forward like a broken flower, I regret not asking questions about what causes dismissal from the Academy.

When I need to get away from the school, I walk by the docks and watch the spacers load and unload their cargo.

On one of these walks two weeks ago, I saw him. I recognized him from the most recent Cortex report. He was walking ten meters ahead of me, accompanied by two young girls. The girls were chasing each other, laughing and spinning and dancing, boiling over with happiness because they were alive and the day was just beginning.

The ground was wet and the concrete pocked with holes from an overnight rainstorm. He said, _The two of you 're gonna fall an' I'm not gonna pick you up._ I liked the sound of his voice as it carried on the chill morning air, gruff and warm. One of the girls swooped back, stood on tiptoe, and kissed his cheek. She twirled once and then danced off again on her bare feet, her long brown hair flowing behind her.

Later, back at the school, all of my girls were up and ready for class except for Estelle who joined us late, drifting in like smoke. He was at the back of my mind the whole time I recited my lesson, while Estelle struggled to keep her eyes open, and Maryam said dreamily, _He will never let them fall, not if he can help it, not if he's still breathing. He'd die first, what the fuck._

It was the what the fuck that broke my heart. That time, anyway.

 

** VII. Jacob Porter, former trading station security guard **

This time I woke up from a dream about my heart being torn out of my chest and broken in half.

Every night I dream up new ways to die: heart ripped out of my body, knives twisted deep in my gut, ropes cutting tight around my neck, Reaver axes hacking off my limbs one by one.

Most nights I wake up screaming.

I couldn't get far enough away from Lilac after that day. I tried to forget what I saw, God knows I tried. I tried to forget him too. _Get them in the vault,_ he barked like I was one of his green recruits and it was still the war. _Get. Them. In. The. Vault._

He left with the payroll. He was careful not to leave the money behind. Afterward, they said I was a hero, but I knew the real hero was the guy who robbed the bank.

 

** VIII. Carlos Castillo, Haven Mining Settlement [document found posthumously] **

He'd never be one to brag about being a hero, a man like him, who knew his place between the dirt and the sky.

I don't think he thought being a hero was even possible, not after the war. The war changed him in some powerful way. You could see it in his eyes. Young'uns have a hard time believing that anything's permanent, but I've spent enough years in the 'verse to know the truth. Folk can change in permanent ways.

He changed after the war. I didn't know him before, but I'm sure of it. I see it on his face every time he stops on Haven to check on Preacher. He comes regular to seek Preacher's counsel he says, but I think it's more to reassure his own self that Preacher's doing fine. I think he thinks Preacher's still part of his crew, even though Preacher's been with us on Haven a good long spell.

In fact, the last time I saw him—

 

** IX. Jayne Cobb, mercenary, crew **

The last time?

This morning. At breakfast.

Gorram protein cubes.

 

** X. River Tam, pilot, crew (fugitive, reader, assassin, albatross) **

In the morning, the world remakes itself.

The last time I saw Mal was 3:57 Persephone time. On Persephone, it is a warm day, all grass and sky. Every morning on hundreds of worlds, grass grows on tiny plots, novices pray to Buddha, ranch-hands shovel hay in barns, children play with pretend swords, mothers make breakfast for their families.

_Job went south,_ Mal said.

They often do, Simon says.

Simon is right, but Mal knows his part now. His job is to keep us together and safe, a family. It's what he does, darlin.' He mends us. He shelters us. He wears a brown coat and also suspenders. He hates Unification Day. He misses the Mal he left in Serenity Valley.

Heroes are men, not made, not born. Sometimes they play with dinosaurs.

It is 4:02 Persephone time. Soon Mal will decide that the job may have gone south, but we're still flying. All of us, actual and whole. The rain will pass soon enough.

At 4:14 Persephone time, Mal will invite me back on to the bridge. I will take my place beside him, keeping very still so I can listen to his heart thrumming under his shirt. I will listen as he rocks back in his chair and his thoughts fly off into the black. I will be still, and I will think: _This is where I belong. This is where I fit._ I will want to curl my fingers into his, but instead I will wrap my hands around the controls of Serenity (my soul, my love). I will say nothing out loud. I will be at his side and without a word I will promise: _I will carry you as you carry me, the way voices are said to carry on the waters of Earth-That-Was._

 

**END**

**Author's Note:**

> **Additional Acknowledgements:** Allusions to work by Elizabeth McCracken, Merin Wexler, Yiyun Li, Jim Shepherd sprinkled throughout. Story structure and some phrasing prompted by Gabrielle Calvocoressi's poem, "The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart." With gratitude.
> 
> **Chinese Translations:**  
> _kuangzhe de_ — crazy, nuts  
> _ai li_ — heartbreaking  
> _shen ban_ — solitary, sad  
> **Source:** [Lin Yutang's Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage](http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Lindict/)


End file.
